I have been setting out barrels to collect wings from grouse harvested by hunters for 18 years, now. (I know this because I just looked at last year's report, and that's what I wrote... 18 years. Nineteen this year.)

Was pounding in the last steel post for the barrel by the Miracle Mile bridge last Friday when a couple Greenie fishermen (they're called that because of the color of their license plates, although not all are green now) came pulling up.

"How's it going?" the passenger asks, leaning out his window.

It's a nice day.

"Not for that," the heavyset driver remarks, nodding his head at my heavy postpounder still hanging on the post.

But hey, I could be sitting at a desk, working in an office somewhere. I'll take pounding steel posts into soft, sandy ground any day over that.

So, two barrels up, waiting for the severed flight appendages of blue grouse harvested starting September 1.

Most wing barrels in the state are more professional than mine. They've spent time welding mounting brackets, and had their signs professionally done (any of these made in your place, Rift?). But then, none of them have had barrels up for 19 years straight.

Most others are white. Shows up better in headlights. So if you see a red barrel like this

it's probably mine. Feel free to drop in a note (others have). Or a good porn mag (that helped pass the time on check stations that year).

No rattlesnakes, please.

On our way back through the Seminoes, the heeler sisters and I stopped for a brief walk to my second-most favorite chokecherry patch.

Chokecherries were picked and gone, but the gooseberry bushes were thick with fruit. It may be contrary to what one might expect, but it seems that most wild fruit plants produce more fruit in dry years. If you can't grow a lot of leaves, then make a lot of seeds, I guess.

Many years ago we had another bumper year of gooseberries, and I did my best to eat my share. And noticed something strange about one berry that I had mooshed as I picked it.

It was wiggling.

Fruit don't wiggle.

But this one was, at least the insides were.

Turns out there was a small maggot inside, the same size and color of the seeds. Some fruitfly larvae, I assume.

Checked over twenty more berries from that bush, and from lots of others since. They all had the little maggots in them. Almost always one each. Which meant I had been getting protein supplements with all the gooseberries I had consumed.

Yum.

But the deed was done, no point in worrying about it at that point. And I went back to eating gooseberries, maggots and all.

Picked and squished several ripe ones off this year's crop. Not a maggot one. Guess the fly population doesn't do well in extended drought.

Kinda took the fun out of eatin' the berries.

On the way back to the rig, I stopped to get some pics of some cone flowers. And spotted a flash of crimson on the ground.

Gilias.

Scarlet gilias. What we used to call shooting stars when we were kids. But aren't related to shooting stars at all.

Don't think I've ever seen so many blossoms on one Gilia plant at one time before. Nor any quite so red.

These flowers are more common in the high prairie country where my Dad grew up. But not so red. Most are almost white, with differing gradations of pink. One of my rancher aunts, and I am embarrassed to say I don't remember which, once explained to me that the flowers were red if they were pollinated by hummingbirds, and white if by hummingbird moths (sphinx moths). And all the shades between if both pollinators were around.

I have absolutely no idea if that is true. But it is an explanation that I like.

As we headed up the divide, headed home, I spotted this:

A harbinger of fall.

Autumn is coming.